Have you ever feel like, the current moment that you are experiencing has already occurred in the past and the present just feels like the...
The term Déjà vu was coined by the French scientist Emile Boirac as he was the first to study this strange phenomenon back in 1876. Normally, Déjà vu is a subjective experience with an inappropriate familiarity of the present experience with the undefined past which mostly occurs between the age of 15 -25. But the impression of Déjà vu may vary depending on the individuals; during seizures, the impression could be the feeling of unusualness; for a clairvoyant, it may be more of a realization of wonderment; for schizophrenic, it might be consciousness of something has been revealed. So the impression varies but the experience of familiarity remains the same while experiencing Déjà vu.
To date, several scientific, as well as philosophical explanations, have been proposed to give an intuitive insight on how such a feeling of déjà vu arises. But Split Perception and Memory based explanation are widely accepted in the quest to realize its occurrence. According to the Split Perception hypothesis, the déjà vu might occur when the first experience of the surrounding is distracted and subsequently the input of the second experience may feel familiar because the person related this experience to the earlier input. The distraction that separates these two perceptions could be as fleeting as an eye blink too. Similarly, Cryptomnesia; the reconstruction of memory is also used to justify the occurrence of déjà vu. In this explanation, the information learned fades out from the memory but such information of event gets invoked while experiencing a similar event in the present causing the individual the sense of familiarity of the situation aka Déjà vu.
Among all the explanations, Dual neurological Processing has received a lot of attention. It was proposed by Robert Efron from his research study on Déjà vu back in 1964. According to this study, he found that the incoming signals after perception of the event enter the temporal lobe twice from both the hemispheres of the brain before processing them. The arrival of incoming signals from both hemispheres is accompanied by a slight delay of milliseconds. Thus sometimes when these signals aren’t properly synchronized, then they would be processed as two separate experiences and the delayed experience would feel familiar causing déjà vu. Furthermore, the consumption of certain drugs also increases the chances of déjà vu. In 2001 it was speculated that Déjà vu occurs as a result of hyperdopaminergic action in the mesial temporal areas of the brain while taking drugs like Amantadine and Phenylpropanolamine together for the relief of flu symptoms. Overall, among the various explanations Dual Neurological Processing theory seems promising and feels logical.
Summing up, this feeling of us, sensing that everything that surrounds us in the present has surrounded us before in time has been a strange phenomenon and has impacted science, history, and literature. Many people had tried to shed light on this phenomenon via psychiatry, neurology, and psychology. But its formidable perplexity demands advanced neurological and psychological study so that a definitive interpretation could be made on such extraordinary experiences. The truth is that our brain is very complex and Déjà vu is one of the results of our brain behaving in its very complicated way. So next time you feel peculiar about something being already seen then don’t worry, maybe it’s your brain trying to resolve an error between the simultaneous perceptions.
Journal 7(1): 7-56.
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